Just to be clear, I am definitely NOT the one with the green thumb in our family, that would be my husband, but that doesn’t stop me from trying! I really love this time of year (minus the crazy snow days…) when the trees and flowers are in bloom, and everything just seems to come back to life overnight. My husband and I spend a lot of time in our yard and M and B really enjoy being outside as well.
Rock Garden
M loves exploring and looking for ladybugs in our backyard. We purchased a cute cedar playhouse for him a year ago, which he really likes, but I wanted to have something to keep him occupied (and stationary) while we are busy weeding, or BBQing on the deck. M’s favourite things to play with are his animal figurines, so I thought he might like a rock garden of his own to use as a sanctuary for his animals when he’s playing outside. Turns out I was right. He LOVES it! He gets so caught up in his pretend play that I can actually sit and read, and enjoy some time for myself (provided the stars have aligned and little B happens to be taking a nap at the same time!)
We started by going to a garden centre where we purchased some planters for the deck, some potting soil, a bag of polished rocks, some gardening gloves for M, and some plants M picked out himself.
This is how they turned out:
To begin with we just added a few bugs and dinosaurs, but the rock gardens soon became a home for lions, elephants, crocodiles, cows, and many more species of animals.
The cutest thing is listening to M’s occasional growls and roars. I love his imagination!
Pizza Garden
I’m not going to pretend this is an original idea by any means, but it seemed like a practical idea for us, being that we make A LOT of homemade pizza at our house, and I enjoy cooking with fresh herbs as often as possible. So, while we were at the garden centre buying the things for M’s rock gardens, I also picked up a herb planter, rosemary, thyme, sweet basil, oregano, some tomato plants, and a jalapeno plant.
I think it will be cool for M to see where the ingredients for our pizza sauce (and other dishes) come from, and to experience the sense of accomplishment (not to mention peace of mind) you get from growing your own food. We plant a small garden every year too, but we’re waiting a bit longer to put it in (with the snow and all 🙁 )
Monogram Flowers
This is an easy project with a fun result.
All you need are some flower seeds (we used Alyssum) , potting soil, some cute pots, and something to write your child’s initials with (you could also use a long deck planter and write his/her full name)
Once we planted the seeds, we watered them and placed them in the windowsill.
We made one for M and one for B. M was really excited to see the letters begin to sprout, and they’ll look even better once they bloom!
Apparently I had a bit of a shaky hand when I was planting B’s…
And, that’s how I kept my bugs busy the past few days 🙂
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